Match “Nairobi vs Crewe” 2023

18 members of Nairobi Chess Club (NCC) had the privilege to play an overseas online match against the prestigious Crewe Chess Club (CCC) from England. The match took place on March 12th.

In fact, it was the third match because both teams already played in 2021 and 2022 with two victories for Nairobi.
Both clubs met for the first time in February 2021 in an online match whose score favoured Nairobi (14-6).
After another defeat in 2022 (23,5 – 16,5), this year Crewe came really prepared for a revanche.

All games were played online on lichess using a time control of 25 min + 10 s increment.
The match consisted of 2 games/player and pairings were arranged according to FIDE and ECF (English Chess Federation) ratings.

The result of the match was 13-21 for Crewe Chess Club, which established an overall score of 2-1 for Nairobi.

Unfortunately, the match was not free of irregularities, mainly due to the inexperience of some players in this type of competition:

  • Dadson and his opponent didn’t show up on time and when both were online, Dadson played against a different opponent. So these games don’t count for the final score.
  • Jackim won the first game. Then he received a challenge for a correspondence game and later a new one with correct time control but without reversing colours. When finally the challenge was correct, his opponent disconnected. 2 points for Jackim
  • Cyril won his first game but played a rematch against a different opponent. Penalty: 2 points for Cyril
  • Sarthak won his first game. In his second game Sarthak choose the not allowed ‘Takeback’ option which triggered the message of cheating. Penalty: game lost for Sarthak
  • But all in all, the meeting took place in a friendly atmosphere and it was a useful learning experience.

    Final Results

    NAIROBI 13 – 21 CREWE
    Artem Gurevich 1,5 – 0,5 Simon Layhe
    Peter Gilruth 2 – 0 Karl Lockett
    Vasant Ramesh 1,5 – 0,5 Harry Gardiner
    Jay Naker 0 – 2 Danny McMenamin
    Willy Simons 0 – 2 Phil Seery
    Jackim Arigi 2 – 0 Richard Walsh
    Viacheslav Chvoro 2 – 0 David Lambton
    Sarthak Patnaik 1 – 1 Martin Frisher
    Reyansh Agarwal 0 – 2 Myron Odingo
    Suraj Shah 0 – 2 Lukasz Michalek
    Hiram Gakembu 0 – 2 George Bulbeck
    Sufian Nathani 0 – 2 James Marshall
    Collins Oduor 0 – 2 Tom Smith
    Johnmark Njaramba 0 – 2 Kobus Nienaber
    Cyril Teddy 2 – 0 Oskar Jarzynski
    Nandini Sardana 0 – 2 Pawel Stanny
    Aseem Sardana 1 – 1 Phil Grocott
    Dadson Rwamba – – – Christopher Marais

    All games of this match:

    The huge expectation created by these matches has impelled both clubs to establish this match as an annual event in their calendars.

    In 2009 NCC organized an online 6-board match against Wageningen Chess Club (The Netherlands) and established a milestone in international projection.
    Now, 14 years later, and in an interval of 2 years, NCC has played 7 online international matches with more than 10 boards each time. The one against Crewe in 2022, breaking the record with 20 boards (!!)

    Being founded in 1958, Nairobi Chess Club is the oldest chess club in East Africa, and also leader in approaching not only chess to people, but also approaching people through chess.

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